


Full Up on Foibles

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Banter, Cooking Lessons, Earth C (Homestuck), Friendship, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-09 22:32:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18647410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Dirk can't cook real food, Jane is horrified by what hedoesattempt to eat, and a very tiny secret plot ensues. Mostly, it's just the beautiful feeling of friendship.





	Full Up on Foibles

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "can't cook, send help".

* * *

  
Jane thought about slugging back her bottle of orange soda in a manner fit to kindle pride in the deadened hearts of the noir-pastiche detectives she loved. No, that would be melodramatic, which was too darned easy to dismiss. She set the bottle down on the countertop with a sharp motion instead, which served her purpose - Dirk was like a cat, attuned to sudden movements, and his attention immediately moved from his Act Of Rank Betrayal to fix on her.

"Dirk. You know that I have great belief in your capabilities as a mastermind."

"No. That knowledge slipped me by. I'll be honest, it's still slip-sliding away like an amateur caught unawares at an oil-wrestling demonstration." Dirk looked at her over his sunglasses. "My impression is that you humour me."

"I am about to demonstrate my faith. I am going to _ask_ why you have put hot sauce, spray cheese, and equally sprayable cream between several crackers. In so doing, I will display full willingness to believe that you have a good reason for it. And also for every canned, triple-packaged, semi-unartificial, supposedly edible substance in your kitchen."

She adjusted her glasses, then waved a hand to gesture at cupboards, fridge, and beloved friend alike. "Dirk, what the fuck."

"Was that you asking?"

"You betcha."

"The faith, too."

"Sooooo much."

"I take vitamin supplements, you know. And you _have_ seen what I'm physically capable of when necessary. Or when mere hints of necessity come up and I feel like showing off."

"Mm-hm."

"Plus, only the freshest seafood will do, from kelp to limpets to fish. That dolphin that had it coming."

The speech had a defensive enough air that Jane felt like she was getting somewhere. It was easier to read Dirk now that they'd spent months with each other in person, but the hints of something genuinely hitting a mark with him were still minute. She pressed the possible advantage. "You'll be able to take even better care of yourself if you learn to cook! It's a key part of self-sufficiency."

"This is cooking," he said, gesturing at his cracker sandwich, and Jane simply had to whip out her phone.

"Allow me to call in a judge. My dad would never allow a familial bias to sully the sanctity of the kitchen."

Dirk crossed his arms, which probably meant he was thinking the suggestion through at lightning speed, or he'd have kept his body language at a minimum. Got you on the run, mister - though he sounded assured as ever when he spoke. "You mean the cake master himself, biggest fan of refined sugars since Calliope C. Cherub, raised by the former scion of the Batterwitch's easy-cook empire? Yeah, let's see what he says about my exhibition in the gallery of the culinary arts."

He made a good point, but Jane had faith. Cake aficionado though Dad was, as well as a single parent on the go and a fan of foods simple and filling, he would nonetheless come through for real food ... _surely_...

Jane locked eyes with Dirk as the message of what represented his idea of a meal sent. Luckily, Dad responded almost immediately.

She read the message and at her expression, Dirk's posture relaxed. "Don't get excited so fast," she said—but hesitated before passing her phone over.

 

> DEAR DAUGHER  
>  I CONCEDE THIS WIN IN OUR LOVING STRIFE, IN PRINCIPLE AND SOON IN PRACTICE  
>  PLEASE CONVEY TO YOUR DEAR FRIEND DIRK THAT I'D LIKE TO ENGAGE HIM IN SERIOUS CONVERSATION RE: NUTRITION IN TEENAGE BOYS

 

"Do I detect a plot, thickening," Dirk said slowly.

"Oh ... hush, you."

"What is this reference to a win, and in which mysterious strife? Only time will tell, as my companion reveals no inclination to unzip her lips."

Jane groaned at him, feeling her face go hot.

"Hey, Jane."

"What?"

"I was going to put mayo on top of my sandwich," Dirk said, dead(pan) serious. "Jane, I love mayo. Trust me, my awareness that biodegradable food is absolutely cash is shiny and new, polished to a gleam."

Her lips thinned in what was doubtless a look more schoolmarmish than as _Go ahead. Make my day_ as she wished. "You wouldn't dare."

Sometimes hanging out with Dirk made her really miss the auto-responder - the AR would have had a lot to say about the ensuing antics. They played two-person keep-away with the jar of mayonnaise like little kids, talking extremely nonsensical smack.

-

On one half of the kitchen countertop, an array of implements. Dirk had angled in that direction as soon as he'd taken in the set-up in the room, though when he stopped there it appeared that the concept of tools was the familiar thing here, not the form or function of these specific ones. He'd reached for what should theoretically be a vegetable knife but had given up on the idea partway through. Jane had gone through much the same weeks ago.

On the other half of the countertop, ingredients: horse milk, and the bouquets to be minced into it; salt; balt; thankfully pre-slaughtered meat, though not all of the cuts had yet been skinned; roots and leaves and sting-fibre plaits; The Sauce. They could be turned into stew or ice cream mash - perhaps both, or who really knew what?

Jane and Dirk sat at the counter to survey these mysterius things, having drinks as her dad finalised arrangements with their new cooking instructor. She had a glass of the orange soda she'd bought for his visit, but Dirk had accepted Dad's gentle pressure to try out something, anything that was not carbonated. His tea-adjacent substance steamed in its mug.

Dirk was staring at the instructor. It still took Dad a while to have a mutually intelligible conversation with most humans, even ones who'd studied as much of the Language Of The Gods as possible, so there was plenty of time for staring - and building up an arsenal. After all, Dad's friendly conversation had gone into a touch of detail about how amusingly disastrous Jane's attempts to figure out Earth C cooking on her own had been.

"Something's a touch disconcerting in this scenario. What could it be?" Dirk said sotto voce. "I know, I forgot to say: Jane, you know that I have great belief in your capabilities as a cook. And, it turns out, as a mastermind."

"I was going to tell you about the teacher," Jane said, a trifle guilty. Dirk was still working on having extended social interactions, and new humans and carapacians tended to require the most work.

"I can see why it might have been difficult for you to find a spot of time to do so over the past two weeks."

"Oh, don't you sip your semi-tea at me, Mr Smug. Did you know it's made with _rocks_?"

"We're made of slime, apparently. Don't be hatin'."

At this point, however, the conversation between her dad and the instructor ended. Jane put on her social smile, probably too bright for this small-scale interaction, and got her first sinking feeling for the day when Dirk got fidgety beside her, and his own mouth set too taut.

The rest of the process was every bit the pain Jane had imagined. The instructor made many obvious concessions to their ignorance - Jane could sense the gaps where her own certainty should be, and her face kept burning with a blush. Dirk was absorbed in studying the blades, but kept pulling distinctly more of a face at the textures of the things he had to cut than was usual. Berries sprouted from a mincing bouquet and the instructor fainted in shame at bringing poison to gods and the father of gods, although according to a swift internet search, there was little way to predict when certain plants would deploy rapid defense, and it was probably the fault of a stray Lifey thing anyway. The ceiling did not survive the meat-skinning session intact. The mingling fumes of rock tea-ish and orange soda made yoghurt of the remnants of horse milk such that Jane would remember in her nightmares.

And when at last they made it to the end, shaken and rendered uncertain of all they had once depended on, the muffin was doughy in the centre.

-

For a long time, they sat at the counter and regarded their creation, an even brown on the outside and with purple streaks through its oozing centre. The instructor had departed; Dad was giving them time to reflect.

"So, the effort to get me here, the batting of your eyelashes as your tender heart stirred at my plight ... it was all a RUSE," Dirk said, and that was a bit of a relief.

"Just a DISTACTION," Jane memed in turn, giving him half a grin. Dirk slung a companionable arm over her shoulders. "But no, seriously. I really, really want to see you eat actual food. It's not like you go fishing much anymore. And you can have it in addition to synthetic crap - I love junk too! But my god, Dirk. I will buy all the antacids that Earth C has to offer, should your stomach protest the advent of actual and varied kinds of nutrients, but please try it. For me."

"Decent reason."

Jane rested her head on his shoulder. "I ... ugh. I am not very good at being bad at things. I could barely watch online tutorials. I got frustrated because they were either for little kids, or I'd have to stop and look up a terms and techniques every other minute. Dad said I was taking it too seriously and should enjoy experimenting, but it was driving me nuts! So thanks for providing this excuse for me to learn to cook too. Again. Whatever."

"I'm bad at being bad at things too. Probably got you beat for being worse at it, hands down."

Jane laughed fairly helplessly at that.

"I'm not kidding. The idea of this was tolerable because you were supposed to be the one teaching me. Now it's somebody I don't know, when you're fully aware of how hard it is to dispose of someone with unfamiliar behavioural patterns, especially one who's doing a good job and tries not to be patronising and stuff."

"I think we're going to have to be mature about this," Jane said grimly. "Accept that we can't excel at it or fake so much as a shred of poise, even in front of a stranger, and that it's important we're doing our best."

"Our shitty, shitty best."

She wanted to growl in agreement, and instead pulled out of their half-hug to elbow him in an attempt at cheer. "At least learning all this cooking malarkey goes easier together. I can always distract myself by attempting to replace the salt and ... balt in your food with at least fourteen of the twenty-three essential kinds of sugar."

"Where would we be without attempts to make catastrophic failure more exciting?"

"Exactly! And we can use all the bug-based ingredients we want, without anyone coming over judgemental about it." Then Jane snickered. "Although John does make great faces when his worldview expands, even as he gets judgemental. You should have seen him when he heard honeypot ants were a completely human delicacy, and that they are simply delicious."

Roxy also got touchy when Jane mentioned things like that, because the bug-related gifts CrockerCorp had sometimes sent Jane, boxes of honeypot ants among them, were probably part of yet another Condescenscion maneuvre. But Dirk never minded that, either.

"Do you still get the ants here?" he asked.

"Nope! The closest I found was this, this thing with fattened double-geckos? They make me think of consorts. Even if those weren't under your care, I could never."

Dirk gave her a commiserating pat. "Pranking isn't much of a draw for me. So. I am now on a course of making an culinary extravaganza of, like, an eight-course meal. There's no other option: gotta win. Because obviously we're locked in competition here. Plus, feasts like that fit my ancient civilisation theme. Always gotta respect the themes."

"Hold on. Weren't those kinds of parties more a Roman indulgence than in line with philosophical Greek asceticism?"

"Ah, but the thematic resonance don't stop there. Did you know the word 'orgy' originally referred to those extravagantly sumptuous parties?"

"Oho! That certainly fits with certain puppet-filled glimpses of the Strider apartment I could not unsee."

"The kink don't stop there; of course, the kink don't stop for nothin'. Vomitariums may or may not have been involved in order to keep these parties going."

"Oh no. Where will this end? How can this monster of my creation be tamed?"

"Elementary, my dear Holmes," Dirk said. "I'm too hungry. Let's eat this disaster, already."

They choked the dense, clingy thing down. The texture bothered Jane so much that the strange blend of flavours hardly seemed worth noting. Corporate shindigs had at times demanded that she chow down with graceful refinement on foods she'd never encountered, so it wasn't that much out of the ordinary - but as a baker, this texture was not be borne. The thing was, she simultaneously felt better about it, because she could think of a few things to try with the oven to improve the muffin.

"Course one: Weird as hell," Dirk said when they were done. "Which is my shit, so that works out."

He was looking overly grim again, though. "Is something the matter?"

"Would you hold it against me if I went against the tenets both implied and stated of all those etiquette guides I once asked you to send me?"

Jane frowned in confusion, and then - as if unable to resist - Dirk licked his fingers for the muffin crumbs. He looked faintly embarrased the whole time but did not stop. When he did, his tongue flicked out one last time for another crumb at the corner of his mouth, a move that looked like it might actually have surprised him.

"You find our creation promising?" Jane said. "You like it! Right?"

"It's ... incentivising. Compelling." He licked his lips again, the movement compulsive, and ran his tongue along his teeth. "Is this what it's like to be a real boy?"

"Don't worry! You'll always be unreal to me," Jane said loyally, and to her surprised pleasure Dirk actually laughed aloud as he put an arm around her shoulders again.


End file.
